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[Alastar]

Yes, but isn't that as it should be? Whip cracks are caused by breaking the sound barrier. I'm not sure how exactly a reasonably-sized metal tip would affect whip handling, but I am pretty sure it'd move considerably faster than you could swing a rigid weapon.

I'm more fond of 'correcting a modeling quirk and get sensible results' than 'making arbitrary changes until I get sensible results'. As far as I understand it, the game assumes weapons are rigid and apply their whole mass to hits... and you shouldn't have 1kg of metal moving at the speed of sound.
I'm aware that velocity multipliers contain a bit of fudging already (in stabs, the whole weapon moves at the same speed in the same direction, in swinging arcs it doesn't) and that this approach would be cleaner, but a small body impacting at high velocity seems to have a different effect on the victim from a larger and slower one that imparts the same energy.

Tiny-but-fast whips are still very good at disabling via pain and chipping bone (on unarmoured bits), more so than other blunt weapons... even though the force/area is no longer impressive.

[Girlinhat]

Ah, now, you make an excellent point.  If you're counting the "size" as "weaponized size" then the handle and hilt aren't part of that size.  The metal-shod top of the whip would be the only consideration (I imagine them as a cat-o-9-tails) and that would mean an extremely low size.  Like 5-20 tops.  Keep in mind that it has a contact area of 1, so small that it can't not pierce armor.

[Alastar]

That's the idea, 'anything up to and including the slack bit doesn't count'. I use a size of 1 or 2 myself, as the very high velocity makes me think of a bullet-like tip on the end of a single-corded whip. For a chain whip or cat-o-9-tails, the values would naturally be different.

Afaik the cat-o-9-tails was essentially an untangled rope though, and not really suitable for scaling up for a proper weapon following a '9 cords must be better than 1' thinking.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Weapons come down to three issues: Size, Weight, and Contact Area.  A large copper dagger tends to be very lethal due to its very small contact area, 5.  That's measured in cm² btw.  For comparison, a dwarf-made spear has a contact area of 20, meaning that the dagger gets its damage 4x more concentrated for stabbing power.  The second issue is size, a dagger has a size of 200, and a spear has a size of 400.  That means 200/5 = 40 size per contact, while a spear has 20 size per contact.  The dagger is approx. twice as good at penetrating than a same-material spear.
...

On this topic, I mention that the slicing knife, a peasant tool, has 150/3=50 size per contact and a penetration distance of 900 vs. the dagger's 1000, making it as good or perhaps better than a dagger. In adventure mode, you can get an Iron Slicing Knife off a random peasant that is a better weapon than your starting Large Copper Dagger.

A carving fork has 150/1=150 size per contact, and a laughable penetration distance of 100, so it ends up producing whip-like damage as well.

[Girlinhat]

Afaik the cat-o-9-tails was essentially an untangled rope though

I'm probably rusty on my stone-age torture techniques.  What was the series of thin leather strips with shards of stone and glass tied into each tip?  That's what I imagine a DF whip is, and the "copper whip" means "copper shards in the whip's tip."

[Alastar]

Series as in one after another? Sounds like one variation of the Russian knout, but I'm not aware of stone or glass shards being commonly used in them (metal bits were though). As something somewhat resembling a cat-o-9-tails (multiple thongs in parallel) with hard/sharp bits in it... well, that's usually referred to as a scourge and modeled as an edged weapon in DF

I'm a little rusty on stone age torture techniques as well, it's been a few years since I went to a British boarding school

[ImBocaire]

I'm probably rusty on my stone-age torture techniques.  What was the series of thin leather strips with shards of stone and glass tied into each tip?  That's what I imagine a DF whip is, and the "copper whip" means "copper shards in the whip's tip."

What you're thinking of is a "scourge," and is already represented in DF. It's essentially a lower-velocity whip that deals edged damage rather than blunt damage, while keeping the very small contact area. A "copper whip" is essentially a "whip made entirely out of copper," which I imagine would be as effective IRL as it is in Dwarf Fortress; imagine someone (competently) wielding a length of steel cable.

Edit: I'm not saying that's what they're supposed to be ideally, I'm saying that's roughly how the game ends up treating them due to the weapon material, size, and velocity rules.